Real Lifestyle Blog

How to Fail Your Finals: Procrastinate

Are you looking for the secret to failing your exams? If so, you came to the right place! I’m actually an expert on procrastinating. I’m doing it right now as I’m creating this post in the library instead of writing my english paper (Sorry, Dr. Taylor). It’s such an easy way to weigh you down and stress you out even more!

Okay, all jokes aside: procrastinating actually will hurt you in the end. While it may be easier to keep pushing off studying or writing a paper, it’s going to catch up to you. I honestly don’t know why it’s so tempting to wait until the last minute, but it is.

There are, however, ways to prevent procrastination. The best way is by planning or scheduling. When I actually have my life together, I plan everything out in my Simplified Planner. My sister gave it to me for graduation and I absolutely love it. On the left, I can plan out every day by the hour and on the right I can make a to-do list. You can even write this on just a piece of a paper- anything that you’ll look at and stick to. Plan times when you have to step away from your distractions (TV, hanging out with friends, etc.) and go to the library, or wherever it is that you like to study.

Another way to prevent procrastination is to cut out TV completely. Since last Monday, I haven’t let myself watch anything on Netflix or Hulu (this was going well until I had to catch up on Grey’s Anatomy yesterday, oops). It is hard to resist, especially if you’re like me and have tons of favorite shows. But! just remember that summer is almost here and then you can watch all of the Netflix you want.

Finally, I recently read an article from the American Psychological Association, and it says that one of the main factors that increases procrastination is self-doubt. I’m finding this to be so true as my 10-page english research paper (that I mentioned earlier) is staring me in the face. I’ve been putting it off is because it has to be so long, and I have no idea how I’ll write that much. We’ve all been there, but you have to start at some point, so you might as well start early and save yourself the stress